Review of Decision-Making Skills

Skill	Explanation	Examples of Use
Frame a decision in several ways to consider different sorts of alternatives	The deliberate use of different ways of phrasing a decision that needs to be made	Changing the wording in a decision, such as "How can we provide low-cost health care to everyone?" to "How can we reduce the cost of quality health care?"
Generate alternatives	Coming up with several possible ways to satisfy the goals of the decision	Two possible alternatives are: 1) provide incentives to keep health care costs down, 2) add basic medical information to high school curricula
Evaluate the consequences of various alternatives	Thinking through likely and unlikely results of different alternative solutions	The incentive system for health care might reduce the quality of care. Giving everyone better health education could prevent some illness.
Recognize the bias in hindsight analysis	Hindsight analysis is the reevaluation of a decision after its consequences are known	After a parolee kills someone, many people want to fire the parole board. CT recognizes that the decision may have been reasonable at the time it was made, regardless of poor outcome.
Use a decision-making worksheet	A procedure for listing alternatives and important considerations and then calculating a decision	In deciding what to do about a revolution, the leaders could list possible actions, analyze and weigh them, and then calculate a decision.
Avoid the entrapment bias	Entrapment occurs when a course of action requires additional investments beyond those already made.	Shana decides to stick with her boyfriend who treats her badly because she has already invested several years of time and energy in the relationship.
Seek disconfirming evidence	There is a pervasive bias to seek information that confirms what we believe to be true, and to ignore or minimize evidence to the contrary.	Make a conscious effort to find information that would not support the dicision to have children when you are inclined to have children.
Be aware of the effects of memory on decisions	We generate alternatives and decisions that we can easily recall.	Seek a variety of input when deciding which college to attend.

*Summarized from Halpern, Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.